Life of Pausanias

Cornelius Nepos (about 110 to 24 BC), from Cisalpine Gaul, was a friend of Cicero and Atticus, and Catullus dedicated his poems to him. His main work, On Famous Men, compared Romans with foreigners in many fields; the book on foreign generals survives, and this short life of the Spartan Pausanias comes from it.

Pausanias, regent of Sparta, commanded the Greeks at Plataea in 479 BC, when the army of Xerxes under Mardonius was destroyed. His success made him arrogant: he dedicated a tripod at Delphi in his own name and, after capturing Byzantium, sent prisoners back to Xerxes and wrote offering to betray Greece in return for marriage to the king's daughter. Recalled and acquitted, he returned to the Hellespont, adopted Persian dress and manners, and plotted with the helots. A young man of Argilus, entrusted with a letter to the Persians, noticed that earlier messengers had never returned, opened it and found an order to kill its bearer. The ephors overheard Pausanias admitting his guilt; he fled to the temple of Athena of the Brazen House, where they walled him in, his own mother, it is said, laying the first stone. He was carried out dying of hunger.

Nepos writes simply and clearly, with short chapters and a firm moral, which makes his lives a classic first reading in Latin prose. This life is a vivid story of treason and its punishment.